15 — Lihzalea

15 — Lihzalea

The sky outside the cave leading to the Kingdom of Dwarves was bright and sunny.

“If you’re trying to ambush us, you’ll have to try harder,” I said to the person awaiting us at the tunnel’s mouth.

“Do you remember me?!” she shouted.

“Lihzalea,” I said, “you’ve got a lot of questions to—”

She burst into tears. “Oh, thank god!”

The gears in my head creaked as I tried to understand what in the world this girl was doing. She was peppy and excited but somehow crying her eyes out at the same time. Was she mentally unstable or was this some side effect of dark magic?

“This is Lihzalea?” Lionel asked.

“She’s just a little girl,” Ketty remarked.

“And we’ve supposedly met her before?” asked Kefin.

No doubt about it, those three were clueless. But something still stuck out to me. With her powers, how had she become a slave in the first place? Her tears almost made me falter, but those were easy enough for someone skilled to fake. I couldn’t let my guard down.

“This is her, all right,” I said. “Listen, crying won’t make me any less suspicious of you. Why weren’t you in the slave quarters?”

“Because a dusk spirit appeared to me. They usually don’t,” she added. “And I used its power, and...everyone forgot me.”

“Go on.”

“It got mad and tried to hurt people. So I left.”

“What happened to the spirit?”

“Dusk spirits can only manifest at night or in caves.”

It made sense. But it was still too dangerous to risk taking her into Rockford, and the spirits of land had said she shouldn’t have the Spirit of Dusk’s blessing.

“All right, well, good luck,” I dismissed her.

Her face wrinkled in panic. “Don’t leave me here!”

I couldn’t let her potentially manipulate my emotions. I decided to hear her out once and only once.

“The land spirits told me that you’re dangerous. Can you explain why they would say that?”

She shuddered, then the waterworks started to flow again. “I just wanna be their friend,” she blubbered, then proceeded to explain herself.

Taking her at her word, it seemed she wasn’t abusing the spirits on purpose. She was simply reacting to danger and instinctively borrowing their powers, but in an uncontrolled manner. She was essentially stealing their essence by accident.

“Then the spirits might have been right,” I muttered to myself. Lihzalea froze and hung her head. “Why can’t you ask the dusk spirit to help you train so you stop robbing them of their power?”

“Because they told me I’d learn to control it in time,” Lihzalea replied.

“The spirits?”

“The people who raised me. The Spirit of Dusk lends me its power, but I think it’s shy. It doesn’t show itself a lot.”

Was this lack of control normal or was her family mistaken? Flawed teachers weren’t uncommon, after all. Brod came to mind.

I wondered if Lihzalea might have been one of the reincarnated. Maybe my reasoning was a little funny, but to be frank, she came across as the sort of person who had an extensive yaoi collection. Now, I wasn’t familiar with this world’s creative fiction enough to know if that stereotype existed here or not. But still, she had an oddly modern vibe about her. That said, I had to wonder where she’d learned to fight if she had indeed been reincarnated.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Seventeen,” she answered.

That took me aback. Was I wrong? She should have been my age if she’d been reincarnated like me. Perhaps the people who had raised her were the reincarnated ones.

“When did you start hearing and seeing spirits?”

“When I was little, I was really weak,” she replied. “Like, on death’s door weak. So my parents sent me somewhere they said would cure me. My memory’s a little hazy, but I still remember what happened after they sold me.” So, she had been a slave. “They made me do a lot of experiments,” she continued. “Take medicine, sword fight even while I was sick. I always had cuts and bruises. And I was always lonely. After a few years of that, I started to see the dusk spirits and I stopped being so sick all the time.”

Had she called them herself? Or had they been drawn to her? Could it have been an effect of some drug? Something else nagged at me too.

“How did you get enslaved if you were already a slave?” I asked.

“I was freed once.”

“Nice owners?”

“I asked them to let me go one time and they just did. I was really surprised, but it was only because the dusk spirit had lent me its power.”

Then she had had access to this power from a young age.

“Something’s been bugging me,” I said. “You used some kind of amnesia-inducing magic when you left the audience chamber, right? How did you do that without leaving a single trace and without the land spirits ever finding out?”

“My power has...a price,” she replied.

“What kind?”

She cast her eyes down. “When we were fighting the ant queen, I used the spirits’ power. I stole their life force, except for Dusk’s, and to give it back, it takes rest. When that happens, the dusk spirit takes over and creates a kind of interference effect around me.”

“And that’s the price you have to pay.”

“Right,” she said. “To be precise, it was already happening after the fight with the ant queen ended. You should have all forgotten about me then and there, but you never did, Mister Luciel.”

I didn’t sense insincerity in her tone, and her eyes were looking straight at me. Her words were logical, but something about her still felt off to me. This wasn’t the whole truth. She was after something. I had no idea whether this girl was trustworthy or not. If she was, we could have taken her to Rockford with us. But I didn’t have that kind of confidence in her. The one mystery that hadn’t been solved was how she was using the powers of the Spirit of Dusk without its blessing. If this spirit really existed, it could have spoken to me like the Spirit of Tides or the land spirits had.

“I have no way of knowing if it’s the spirits going berserk or you losing control of yourself,” I said. “Either way, there are enough threats in this world to me and my companions without adding you to it.”

“Yeah,” she murmured, dejected, before forcing a smile. “You’re right. You freed me from slavery. I should be grateful for that.”

I wavered. I couldn’t find it in myself to abandon her, so I decided to delay things until I had enough information to know what was right.

“I’ll let you borrow the greatsword and shield,” I told her. “I’ll write a letter for you to show King Rockwell. Wait in the Kingdom of Dwarves until I come back.” She shot me a look of pure surprise. “Unfortunately, I’m not quite jaded enough to abandon someone in need.”

“Thank you!” she cried. “Thank you so much!”

I took some parchment from the magic bag and penned a short letter to Rockwell as Lihzalea continued to thank me repeatedly. The spirits were enigmas, and if Lihzalea was clean, she could provide a better understanding of them. Or so I hoped.

“The plan is to be back in ten days,” I said. “Stay in the Kingdom of Dwarves until then.”

“I will! I’ll wait right here until we meet again!”

I called Forêt Noire from the hermit key space and prepared to mount her when she suddenly reared up at the sight of Lihzalea.

“Oh!” Lihzalea jumped. “D-Did I do something?”

“Whoa!” I did my best to soothe my horse. “What’s the matter, girl?”

Forêt continued to stamp her feet and puff at Lihzalea. Horses were smart beasts and well attuned to people’s natures, Forêt more than others. If even she sensed something wrong with the girl, there could be no mistake.

“Sorry, she’s a bit moody,” I apologized.

“I don’t think she likes me,” Lihzalea replied dryly.

“Anyway, until next time.”

“Until then.”

We watched Lihzalea disappear into the tunnel, then departed for Rockford.

A little down the road, Lionel said, “The place she was sold to... I believe it may have been Illumasia.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Poor health in children is sometimes indicative of dissonant classes,” he said. “The latent presence of ill-suited jobs deep within one’s body.”

“But that’s theoretical, I assume.”

“Regardless, the empire has been gathering such children and enlisting them as soldiers.”

“Why?”

“Ostensibly, to heal them,” Lionel explained. “In truth, it’s to turn them against their mother nations.”

“To brainwash them,” I said.

“Yes. They strike while they’re young, too naive to even know they’re being poisoned.”

“This sounds similar to something I heard back in Merratoni,” I murmured. I remembered what Bottaculli had done with his daughter. If all this were true, what would have become of her? “What does the empire do with the adult slaves it receives?”

“I imagine that largely depends on the individual, but they could be sold off to another country, kept as pets, or used to train the children. Not to mention the rumors surrounding human experimentation.”

“But you stopped that, didn’t you?”

“Tried to,” he corrected. “The matter proved more complicated than I had ever anticipated.”

“I still don’t understand something,” I said. “Why would Illumasia go out of its way to essentially kidnap children based on something entirely theoretical?”

“Because it is not theoretical to them,” Lionel replied. “The emperor himself experienced it firsthand. As a child, his body was weak, but upon reaching adulthood, he obtained power. With the attainment of a single class, he became the ruler of a nation.”

“So what does that mean for the child slaves?”

“I can only speak based on rumors. Supposedly, the initiative has borne fruit, but those who fail to provide noteworthy classes are sold off. I wish I had been able to investigate the facilities where the experiments take place, but alas.”

“Something tells me we might have bitten off more than we can chew.”

Why would the empire spend a fortune purchasing child slaves, raising them, feeding them, clothing them, and training them only to get rid of them right after? I had to remember to ask Lihzalea for answers. If she was willing to give them, that is.